I'm a Winner!

photo © 2009 Antonio Domingo | more info (via: Wylio)

I am very excited to be one of the winners of an Echo Smartpen education bundle from Livescribe. To celebrate Teacher Appreciation week Livescribe hosted a contest on Twitter. Winners had to be the first to answer a trivia question about the smartpens. To see all of the winners check out the bios here. Follow them @Livescribek12 because they plan another contest this summer. Their site has many useful and short videos about how to use the pens and suggestions for using them in the most effective ways.

I have written about my desire to use smartpens and now I am thrilled to give it a try. Sixth graders are currently working on booktalk scripts that I hope to turn into pencasts for our state junior book award nominees. I plan to train our teachers on using the device and hope that it will circulate throughout school and help our students learn many different subjects. You do not have to wait on the summer contest because the pen is not outrageously expensive. Last check on Amazon was $121.

Anyone else out there using this nifty tool?

Green With Envy: Using Chroma Key

Last year at the Upstate Technology Conference I had the pleasure of hearing the keynote from Hall Davidson of Discovery Education. One of the tools he mentioned was the chroma key feature found in video editing software. Most people are probably familiar with the "green screen" effect during the weather reports on news broadcasts and special effects for high budget films. Well, it doesn't take much money or technical ability to create this effect with your students. I knew that our students would love doing this and it was definitely something new to them, but I didn't try this until today.

A big thanks to the Mighty Little Librarian and her post "I'm A Green Screen Machine" because she reminded me of this tool and prompted me to give it a try. I was pleased to find that the software I wanted to use was free and not blocked. I used Jaycut, although there are other options out there. I purchased a bright green curtain from Walmart and pulled out one of our Flip cameras. With a little nudge my library helpers agreed to star in the video. I downloaded a few video clips from Discovery Education's United Streaming and wrote a very short script explaining the tool and how I could help teachers implement it in class. While I manned the book fair my student helpers recorded the video then I did the editing. I was pleased to find it very easy to do.

In Jaycut you need to upload the video clips first. Drag the green screen video to the Video A row and the other clips to the Video B row. I trimmed the Discovery Education videos to correspond with the script and moved them around where I wanted them. If you are familiar with MovieMaker you will find this software to be easy. To enable the Chroma Key effect, double click the green screen video clip, choose the Effects Tab, click Yes for Chroma Key, ensure the color selected matches your screen (green in my case, but it can be other colors), and adjust the sensitivity. I set the sensitivity to 40%. I really wanted to increase it to hide a wrinkle in the green curtain, but when I did it erased my student's white shirt and blond hair. Just play with this until you get it where you want it. I learned to make sure there are no major wrinkles in the curtain before you record. I also suggest having lots of green in the shot so that viewers can see the clips. In my case the only way they agreed to do the talking was together so you can't see much of the background.

I used video clips as a background and I did not want the audio. To remove the audio, double click the clips in Video B, select the Audio tab, reduce volume to 0%. You could use the audio if you wanted to mesh the clips with the audio from your students by trimming the clips and adjusting audio for each clip. You can also use an image as a background and then audio would not be a concern.

Please don't judge my video too harshly. It was a learning experience, but I had fun creating this little video and can't wait to try this with our students. Two teachers have already expressed interest in using this for a project. One of our science teachers plans to try this soon and one of our English teachers wants to use it to create book trailers.

Have you tried chroma key? What ideas do you have for using this in the classroom or library?

Green Screen Demo

Two New Advocacy Opportunities

There are two new advocacy opportunities in my future.

1. ALA National Library Legislative Day: I am lucky enough to be attending this event in Washington, D.C. with the president of our state library association. I am excited, but also a little nervous because I take this responsibility very seriously. Now, more than ever, advocating for libraries is essential. I have been preparing by reading up on library research and the background of our state congressmen.

2. Education Administration Graduate classes: After corresponding with a university professor, there are plans for our advocacy committee to visit some of the graduate classes. Having an audience with these future principals will be a great way for us to build connections and illustrate the importance of a strong library program.

What would you like to tell our government representatives? school administrators?

photo © 2008 Eric E Castro | more info (via: Wylio)

Welcoming 5th Graders

This week we have been having school tours for 5th grade students from our feeder elementary schools. I met briefly with the guidance counselor planning the event and asked her if I could speak with the groups for a few minutes during the tour. She said that no one else has ever offered to do anything for the tour and she would love it if I wanted time with them. I decided to create a video in Moviemaker that highlighted some of the programs and activities that we have done this year. I thought this would be the best option because if I had a class and couldn't take the time to stop and talk with each group they could still watch the video to get an idea about what we do and get excited about the library. I plan to visit the schools before we leave for the summer to tell them about our summer reading program. All of our schools are pretty close so I don't think this will be a problem and I believe that I will get a better response if I deliver the information personally. I created a parent scavenger hunt for our rising 6th grade students to complete with their families at an Open House event. Thanks to Google Translate and a quick check from our translator I also have a Spanish version. Of course, the library is on the tour and I'll pull out all the stops that night to make sure they all feel welcome and enthusiastic about our library program.

The students enjoyed the video and left with big smiles and lots of "This is cool!" comments.

How do you welcome new students?

South Carolina's Library Snapshot Day

SCASL's Library Snapshot Day Information

South Carolina school librarians impact the lives of their students daily. Whether working with entire classes or individuals, we enhance our students’ education. Study after study has proven the worth of effective school library programs led by certified school librarians. As of yet, South Carolina school libraries have not been featured in one of these studies. Let’s provide our administrators, district personnel, school board members, and state legislators with data that demonstrates the need to support school library programs in South Carolina!

The South Carolina Association of School Librarians is sponsoring a snapshot day of data for our school libraries. We ask that each school librarian choose a day in the month of April, National School Library Month, to collect data, anecdotes, testimonials, and photographs to submit to the SCASL Advocacy Committee. The committee will compile the data and other requested information and provide each South Carolina school librarian with a report that he/she will want to share with their school communities and state legislators. Together, we can provide a powerful picture of the impact our programs have.

How can I participate?

Please collect the following data to submit: A) General

1. Type of schedule: fixed, flexible, or combination

2. Number of students attending your school

3. Number of teachers on your staff

4. Number of school librarians on your staff

5. Number of full or part time library assistants on your staff

6. Number of computers in your school library and on mobile laptop labs

7. Number of items in your library’s collection

B) Data from one day in April (choose one of your busiest days!)

8. Number of individual students visiting the library (not with a class)

9. Number of classes visiting the library and the total number of students in those classes

10. Number of teachers visiting the library (with and without classes)

11. Number of classes the school librarian taught

12. Number of items circulated

13. Number of individual student computer uses

C) Anecdotes and Testimonials from one day in April

D) Photographs from one day in April

Where will I submit the data, anecdotes/testimonials, and photographs collected?

The data you collect for #1-13 above should be entered in this survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/scaslsnapshot

All photographs can either be uploaded to the SCASL Flickr Account or attached to an email sent to fran.bullington@gmail.com

When is the deadline for data and photo submittal?

Thursday, May 5th

Questions? Have questions about this initiative? Email fran.bullington@gmail.com

________________________________________________________________

My Snapshot Day

I held my Library Snapshot Day this week on a very busy day. I have a book fair going on, 5th grade tours and 6th grade classes all day. Collecting the information for the day was very easy. Many of the questions I could answer right away. I kept a record of visitors by making tally marks all day. I have a laptop at the door for sign in, but I knew there were visitors each day that "forget" to sign in so recording the numbers myself would be more accurate. Having the book fair actually reduced my numbers because I didn't have my usual lunchtime readers and computer gamers, but hopefully my shoppers made up for it a little. Recording circulation was simple because I pulled a report in Destiny. I did have to go back and add the A/V items because I wasn't sure if I should could the laptops and iPods as one check out for the day or one for each of the four classes that used them. I asked for a second opinion and decided to count them four times. I put out the SCASL surveys and had my student helpers ask others to complete the short questionnaire. I put a copy in each teacher's box as well, but only had two teachers complete them. It was affirming to read the nice quotes from my students.

In addition to answering the survey for SCASL my district is collecting the data so that we can create a Day in the Life video to share with our district office administrators, school board, community, parents, teachers, students and principals. We plan to use Animoto to create the video and spread the news about our impact on students.

Have you collected your data yet? I hope to see high levels of participation, especially in this critical time for education. What are you waiting for?

To read more about Snapshot Day check out Cathy Nelson's reflections on her day.

QR Code Easter Egg Hunt Update

The past few days my sixth graders have been coming in for the QR Code Easter Egg Hunt. My previous post on this activity can be found here. I'm happy to report that is was a hit with the students and teachers. All of the students were engaged and had fun while they learned. The teachers were impressed with the content of the questions and the novelty of the activity. My principal even stopped by for a visit and enjoyed seeing technology in action. Everyone can rest easy now that my sixth graders have saved the Easter Bunny and released him from captivity. Enjoy a few pictures from the fun times we had in the library.

Technology, Book Browsing, and the Interactive Library

photo © 2010 Thomas Abbs | more info (via: Wylio)
Two articles in the American Libraries March/April 2011 issue have my wheels turning: Jason Griffey's "CES: The Librarian's Takeaway" and Meredith Farkas's "Let's Not Borrow Trouble" .

I am in the middle of reorganizing my collection and I am seriously considering a few major shakeups like shelving fiction by genre and nonfiction by subject instead of Dewey. I want to make the library easily accessible to my students. No matter how many lessons I give on Dewey and browsing they are still confused which tells me that instead of spending time trying to change them maybe I need to change how I organize the library. I don't know what the consensus is in the library community, but I have to make decisions about this with my students in mind.

These two articles spoke to me in regards to these decisions. Griffey's article describes some of the gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show and how they relate to libraries. The gadgets mentioned made me think about how I can make my library more interactive and accessible. Griffey says "Experiences become expectations." Our students are accustomed to technology, gadgets and personalization and expect this type of experience in the library. I have made small steps in this direction by having a digital frame that shows slides of book covers and videos of book trailers as well as posting QR codes and having QR code lessons, but I have a long way to go.

Farkas discusses the issues that need to be considered as our e-book collections grow. One issue that really stood out to me was the issue of browsing an e-book collection. Let's face it, we judge books by their covers, but ebooks are difficult to browse in this way. We have Kindles, iPods and iPads that we use with our students. My low tech solution to browsing e-books has been using Power Point to create visuals of the book covers and summaries of the books that are on display. I recently created a visual poster using Glogster for our state junior book award nominees that included book covers, podcasts and links to author web pages. This is more interactive, but still not the easiest solution for our students' browsing habits.

After reading these articles the question in my mind is: How can I use technology to make browsing easier for my students?

Here are a few ideas that I have considered:

• QR Codes: Using a smartphone or iPod students can scan the QR codes on books to listen to book talk podcasts or visit author or book web pages. I did this with our state book award nominees and posted about it here. I could post QR codes at Dewey sections or genre sections to help students learn about the collection's organization.
• Smart Pens: Book talks can be built into the book with a Livescribe pen. Read the post describing how to do this on The Daring Librarian's spectacular blog.
• KINECT technology: After seeing KINECT used to create interactive window displays in stores I really want to try this in the library. It would be awesome to have an interactive display that allowed students to explore genres, holiday or event displays like Banned Books, or programs and promotions like reading contests.
• Augmented reality: This technology is growing rapidly and I see loads of potential for libraries. Most people thing this is really complicated, but one common use of this is the yellow first down line when you watch football on TV. Apps could be created that allow students to flag their favorite books, recommend books to their friends through the app and librarians could put markers and guides throughout the collection. The student would look at the shelf through the smart phone or iPod device and see the notes and markers created in the app. These apps could translate signs into other languages like the Word Lens app. This would allow easier browsing for our non English speaking students. You can even use them to create virtual objects. To promote that new fantasy book you could have a dragon perched on the shelf where the book is housed. There is already an app that could help in shelving books.

What ideas do you have for using technology to make browsing easier for your students?